The AutoAuditorium System

Foveal's
AutoAuditoriumTM System
is a fully automatic, multi-camera system for
televising auditorium presentations.
Once installed in an auditorium
or large meeting room, recording or telecasting any presentation given
in that room is as simple as turning on a switch and hitting RECORD.
There are no other operator controls.
All the shot selections, video
transitions, camera motion, focusing and zooming, are performed
automatically.
The result is often indistinguishable from a program
produced by a crew.

The system automatically tracks the lecturer (without that person
having to wear or carry any target or mechanism), automatically makes
video shot selections, and also automatically mixes audio from both
the stage and the audience.

The output of an AutoAuditorium session is base-band video and audio,
which can then be:

Recorded on video tape or DVD or Blu-ray.

Encoded as a digital recording.

Transmitted over broadcast or narrowcast media.

The AutoAuditorium system is distinguished by being:

Economical, both to install and to operate,

Unobtrusive, both to the person giving the presentation and
the audiences watching it,

Readily available.

The economy comes from the completely automatic operation of the
system which follows the person giving the talk and and selects which
of several images to show the remote audiences.

The design of the system is deliberately unobtrusive.
The person
giving a presentation and the local audience are not distracted by
bright lights, obvious cameras or television personnel.
Even people
who are nervous about ``being on television'' quickly forget the
cameras.

The system is permanently installed, and switching between normal
auditorium use and Automatic Auditorium use takes but a few minutes.

The Automatic Auditorium fills the gap between face-to-face video
teleconferencing and studio-based business television programming both
in terms of capabilities and economies.
Meetings too big to hold in
traditional video teleconferencing rooms fit naturally into a
Automatic Auditorium setting.
Productions not important enough or
complicated enough to justify the expense and the elaborate
capabilities of a television studio or a field production crew become
economical as Automatic Auditorium programs.

The system is ideally suited for any situation where a group of people
come into a room and watch a presentation give by someone on a stage
who uses projected visuals.

Some examples of such presentations are:

Distance Education

Group Collaboration

Sales Seminars

New Product Launches

Corporate Training

Regularly Scheduled Presentations

Impromptu Events

Foveal Machine Vision Camera Mounts

Derived from a need for a reliable mechanism to position a television camera
precisely in all three axes (pan, tilt, and roll),
and then lock those positions permanently,
we developed the
Foveal 3-Axis Rigid Camera Mount.
The mount has proved useful for applications other than AutoAuditorium Systems
and
other than mounting cameras and
so is available separately.

Some potential
customers of the 3-Axis Rigid Camera Mounts found they were too elaborate
for their applications.
So we created the
Foveal 2-Axis Fine-Adjustment Camera Mount.
It is a less expensive,
less robust,
two axis mount that features fine adjustment and locking
of the pan and tilt axes.

Foveal Sponsors the Tour de Sol Reports

Mike Bianchi,
founder of Foveal Systems,
is interested in electric vehicles.
From 1994 until the present he
has been documenting the American Tour de Sol
US Electric Vehicle Challenge in a series of Reports.
The name has changed some over the years,
but the intent has been pretty much the same,
namely to show that there are alternatives to gasoline and diesel fuels
in internal combustion engines for transportation.
The first American Tour de Sol in 1989 had all solar-powered vehicles.
Battery electric, hybrid-electric, and alternative
fueled vehicles have been added to the event over time.
The
Tour de Sol Reports
tell the stories of the vehicles and
the people and organizations which create them.

Automatic Auditorium, AutoAuditorium and AutoAud
are trademarks of
Telcordia Technologies
used under license.

Where does the name
FOVEAL
come from?
The fovea is the most sensitive part of the eye,
where we see with the greatest clarity.
The Foveal Systems' products are based on computer vision
technology, so . . .